


Spooky Mulder's UFO Club

by stillflying



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-06
Updated: 2016-08-17
Packaged: 2018-04-30 08:37:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5157245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stillflying/pseuds/stillflying
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>College AU wherein Scully loses a bet and is forced into joining one of the more... unique clubs that the college has to offer.  (a.k.a. two nerds investigate unexplained phenomena in their spare time because who needs to bother with studying when there are UFOs to hunt?)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. First Contact

**Author's Note:**

> I have finally given in to my desire to write a college au. I am British, so my experience of American colleges (and America in general) is non-existent, excuse any obvious mistakes in that regard. If I happen to use any exclusively British words/terms/etc. at any point, feel free to leave a comment politely calling me a fucking idiot and I shall rectify that.  
> I obviously do not own this show or these characters because if I did they would be living happier lives.

UFO CLUB: EVERY THURSDAY

Dana Scully stood alone, looking at the hand written sign tacked onto the door, and almost turned around and went back to her room.  This was ridiculous.  Utterly ridiculous.  If it wasn’t for her extraordinary levels of determination, she wouldn’t have even come down here in the first place.  But, no.  She was going to do this.

‘This’ had all started a week ago, with a drunken party and a rather unfortunate bet.  She was only a freshman at college, but within her first few weeks of starting, she somehow wound up at a party with her older sister and a bunch of sophomores.  Melissa had dragged her there, insisting that she would help her baby sister get to know people: what happened instead was a series of drinking games, followed by a bet which she managed to lose to an extraordinary degree.  She could barely remember the finer details of it now (though she was sure she would have completed it easily if she had been sober) but what she did remember was the laughter of the sophomores as they selected her forfeit.  Words like “spooky” and “UFO” were thrown around, and finally they announced it – for her entire first term of study, she had to become a member of the college’s UFO club.

At first, she had assumed it was a joke, refusing to believe such a thing actually existed.  As it happened, the UFO club did very much exist, and it was run by a student with quite the reputation.  The sophomores called him Spooky Mulder – Melissa later informed her that his real name was Fox, and Scully couldn’t quite decide which was worse.  Not only was this Mulder the president of the club, but as it turned out, was also the sole member.

“There’s got to be more than one student in the whole college who believes in UFOs,” Scully had argued.  Why would someone bother having a club if they were the only member?

“Yeah, but this guy’s _really_ weird, so even they don’t want to join,” a girl had replied.  “He’s always walking around by himself, he doesn’t have any friends.  He says a load of really weird things.  He’s meant to be really clever, but he got into an argument with one of the lecturers about aliens in his first week, so nobody takes him seriously.”

And now Scully was going to become associated with him.  Wonderful.  She had picked up a few more facts about him from Melissa the next day – he was a sophomore, he studied psychology, and was apparently one of the top members of his class, despite his unusual reputation.  He seemed to be famous throughout the college, and Scully couldn’t help but wonder if this fame would become contagious when people realised that Mulder was no longer the only member of his club.  Spooky Scully was not a flattering nickname.

And yet here she was, standing outside the door.  The room had been difficult enough to find (who knew the college had an accessible basement?) and she was already late, but managed to convinced herself that she was not going to let all that effort spent go to waste.  She looked at the sign once more.  UFO CLUB: EVERY THURSDAY.  This time, she noticed a tiny alien head drawn in the corner in pencil.  With a small smile on her face, she knocked on the door.

“Come in,” a flat voice from inside the room responded.  She pushed open the door and entered.  Usually she would have taken in her surroundings, but this time, she was more concerned by the man sitting at the desk.

He had turned around to face her when she entered, making her feel slightly put on the spot, as though she had entered somewhere she shouldn’t have.  Still, it was unusual to meet someone for the first time after having heard so much about them, and she took a moment to take in his appearance.  Even sitting down, she could tell he was tall, far taller than her (though that wasn’t difficult). He had floppy brown hair, broad shoulders, and was wearing large, wire-rimmed glasses.  She felt that these aged him a little, and somehow he managed to look both grown up and childish at the same time.  She wasn’t sure what she had expected the famous Spooky Mulder to look like, but it wasn’t like this.  She was pleasantly surprised.  No tin-foil hat, for a start.  If anything, he looked totally normal, considering his reputation.  “Fox Mulder?” she asked, as if to make sure.

She felt him look her up and down in response, as if assessing if she was acceptable to reply to.  Finally, he said “just Mulder.”

“Dana Scully.”  She almost held out her hand to shake, but decided against the formality at the last minute, shoving her hands into her pockets instead.  “I’m here to join your club.”

“Well, _Scully_.  I suppose you’re down here because you lost a bet,” Mulder said calmly, turning back towards his desk.  Scully wondered if he was just guessing, or if news really did travel that fast.  Either way, he seemed perfectly accepting of the idea that people would only want to associate with him against their own will, and she wondered if this sort of thing had happened before.  She felt a pang of guilt.  The idea of joining Spooky Mulder’s UFO club wasn’t so amusing now that she was standing alone with him in a basement and realising that this was probably how he spent all of his free time.

“I was actually looking forward to joining,” she said carefully.  “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

Mulder stood up with a start.  “You mean, you’ve heard that I’m _spooky_ ,” he said, crossing over to the other side of the room where she was standing, carrying whatever he had been looking at over to a filing cabinet.  “You’ve heard that I’m crazy, that I’m paranoid, that I’m _not quite right_.”  He didn’t sound annoyed, exactly.  More nonchalant, as if he’d heard it all before, which she was sure by this point that he had.  ‘Spooky’ clearly wasn’t just something people called him in secret behind his back.

As he turned back to face her, Scully realised he was waiting for her to respond.  “Is it true?” she clumsily asked.

He grinned at this, a grin which caused his entire face to change and his eyes to light up.  “If the truth is what you want, you’ve come to the right place.”

He turned back to the filing cabinet.  As he filed what looked like a collection of old photographs away in the top drawer, Scully look the opportunity to look around the room.  The walls were depressingly grey, but that clearly hadn’t stopped Mulder from trying to decorate.  There was a notice board nailed behind his desk, covered with all manner of things – newspaper cuttings, blurry images of what she supposed were meant to be UFOs, a postcard from Loch Ness...  It was the poster on the back of the door, however, which really captured Scully’s interest.  I WANT TO BELIEVE.  Not “I believe”, but “I want to believe”.  She was curious as to what exactly it meant – didn’t he already believe?  Was there a reason he wanted to believe so desperately?  She was almost considering asking about it, when Mulder’s voice broke into her thoughts.

“What’s your verdict?”

“Huh?” she asked, taken by surprise.

“You’re looking around my office.  What do you think?”

Scully almost laughed at the choice of the word “office”.  Did he think he was running a business?  She decided not to mock him for it, and instead said “I didn’t realise there were empty classrooms down here.”

“There isn’t,” Mulder said.  “This used to be a room for the janitors, and then they moved on to better digs.  I begged Skinner to let me have it, since the teachers wouldn’t let me have my poster up in the classrooms.”

“Skinner?”

“He’s in charge of that sort of thing; he’s one of the higher uppers.  He’s alright, though.  I don’t trust most of them – you’re a freshman, right?  Have you seen Spender yet?  Creepy old guy, stinks of smoke.  He’s hiding something, I know it.  I’ve got these friends...” he started, and all of a sudden, he was off on a tangent about three friends of his, and how they had hacked into the college computer system and found suspicious unopenable files.

Scully was taken aback.  She had barely been in the room for five minutes and already she was being bombarded with conspiracy theories about members of staff.  At least she couldn’t fault Mulder’s enthusiasm.  He was certainly passionate about his beliefs, as ridiculous as they may seem.  His eyes had lit up again as he spoke, and she wondered how a man this much taller than her could remind her so much of an excited kid at a candy store.  He seemed fully ready to launch into an entirely new speech about the secrets surrounding various administrative staff members, when he stopped himself.

“But I think we all know the real question here,” he said instead.

“Which is?” Scully asked.

Mulder reached back into the filing cabinet and produced a new folder, from which he emptied out a collection of sheets into his hand.  He spun back around to look at her, turned the sheets he was holding to face her with somewhat of a dramatic flair, and asked in a hushed voice, “Dana Scully, do you believe in the existence of extraterrestrials?”

Scully peered down at the sheets – a collection of enlarged, blurry, black and white photographs she couldn’t quite make out.  Looking closer, one seemed to be a weather balloon floating above some trees, though she could guess what Mulder thought it was.  Another was definitely supposed to be the body of an alien, but she was sure she had seen better special effects in movies that were decades old.

She looked back up at him defiantly.  She decided that while she may have been forced into joining a UFO club, this didn’t necessarily mean she had to sacrifice her own beliefs in the process, and she was determined to stand her ground.  “Logically,” she stated, “I would have to say no.”

Mulder sighed.  “Let me guess,” he said, sorting the photos back into their folder.  “You study something logical and serious, don’t you?  Math?  Science?”

“Medicine.”

“And you don’t think it’s medically possible for aliens to exist?”

“Mulder, it’s basic physics!” Scully exclaimed.  “You can’t seriously believe UFOs are floating around earth – the distances needed to travel across space would-”

“You can’t even consider it?” Mulder interrupted.  “You don’t even think there’s the smallest chance?”

Scully sighed and shrugged her shoulders.  “I don’t know, Mulder,” she said.  “If... if there was proof, if I saw real, scientific proof, then I suppose I might believe you.  But until then...”

“That’s alright, Scully,” Mulder said.  “I’ve got the whole rest of the year to convince you.  Maybe even a bit longer than that, I’ve got time.”  With that, he checked his watch, and said “but not much; not now anyway.  We’ll have to cut today’s meeting short.  I wasn’t expecting anyone to come, and I need to meet with some people soon, so I really ought to go.”  He paused, and then tentatively asked, “will I see you next week, Scully?”

Scully found herself nodding.  “I suppose so,” she said.

“Welcome to the club, then.”  He picked up his jacket from the back of his desk chair and shrugged it on – followed by a hideous neon green backpack which Scully hadn’t noticed before.

“Any final questions before I go?” he asked.

Scully glanced around the room again, as if searching for inspiration.  “Why ‘I want to believe’?” she asked, gesturing to the poster, determined to satisfy her curiosity.  “Why not just ‘I do believe’?”

Mulder stood silent for a moment as he seemed to think the question through.  Scully wondered if she was going to get another essay-length response.  “I guess... it’s important to me,” he finally said.  “I’m not naive, you know.  I know what people say about me.  I know what they think.  I’m just not going to sacrifice my beliefs because other people are gonna go around calling me Spooky.  The search for the truth means more than that.  If I wanted, I could pack in this whole thing right now and go back to living a normal life, and people would treat me like a normal guy.  But I’d never know the truth.  And I don’t want that.  I want to believe.”

Scully smiled.  She could admire the nobility in that.  His beliefs may have been vastly different from hers, but she understood what it was like to have people question what you believe in – she had already gained a few strange looks when her fellow medical students had found out she was Catholic, as though religion and science were mutually exclusive.  Mulder may be the one with a strange reputation, but the more he spoke, the more she warmed to him and began to doubt the strange rumours surrounding him.

“Does that answer your question?” he asked.

She nodded.  “Yes.  Yes, I think so.”

“I’ll be off, then,” he said, making his way towards the door.  “Feel free to stay, take a look around, the club’s technically on until 8:00.  Oh, and Scully,” he added, as he opened the door and prepared to back out.  He turned to face her, looking into her eyes as if testing her, waiting to see how she would react.  “You’ve listened to me talk.  You’ve seen all the evidence.  How about it?  Do _you_ think I’m spooky?”


	2. Close Encounters

It was a week before she saw Fox Mulder again.  The UFO club was apparently to meet weekly, and she was preparing herself for having to go again this evening.  Not that the first meeting was bad – not at all, she actually found Mulder entertaining if anything.  She was just concerned that the punishment for losing this bet was a little more than simply attending a few sessions.  The day after the first one, she was ambushed in the corridor by the group from the party, asking if she had attended.  Once she confirmed that she had, she was attacked by a series of increasingly invasive personal questions about Mulder, ranging from his personality to his family life.  She had absolutely no desire to gather information about another student for the amusement of others who would no doubt mock him for it, and so she avoided the questions as much as possible, stating that Mulder was “actually alright” and that she “didn’t really learn much about him”.  They had asked her to find out more next time, and while she definitely wasn’t going to do so, she was still nervous.  She wasn’t going to back down from completing the bet, but if part of it involved a group of older students following her around asking to spy on someone, she would certainly become stressed out about it.

She spent her medicine lecture that day in somewhat of a daze, spending more time wondering what she was going to do about that evening than actually concentrating on what she was supposed to be learning.  _Great_ , she thought.  _I’m in my first few weeks of the course, and already I’m distracted._

“Are you alright, Dana?” a classmate asked her at the end of the lecture, walking out of the door with her.  “You weren’t making many notes.”

“Sorry, I guess I’m just distracted today,” Scully said, as vaguely as possible.

“You can borrow my notes if you-” her classmate began, but was interrupted by the distant sound of “SCULLY!” being shouted from down the corridor, startling them both.

Scully turned around to see the source of the shouting, and it took her a moment to register that Fox Mulder was jogging towards her in an attempt to catch up.  She wondered if she should tell him that most people called her Dana, not Scully – then again, she didn’t think that would stop him anyway.

“Scully!” he finally announced for the last time, coming to a standstill beside her.  “You coming tonight?”

“Yes, I was planning to...” she said slowly, not wanting to lie, but also suddenly incredibly wary of what he might have in mind.

He grinned, seeming excited.  “We meet a bit later today.  Meet me in the parking lot at 8:00 sharp.”

“What for?”

“Official UFO club field trip,” he said at once, adopting a serious tone.  “Compulsory for all members.”  It was at this point that he seemed to notice her classmate was actually present, looking at him like he was insane.  He leaned in closer to Scully’s ear so he could speak more quietly, as though he was about to impart information that nobody else could know.  She could feel his breath hot on her neck, and felt her heart begin to beat faster – though out of nervousness or excitement, she couldn’t quite tell.  Eventually, he spoke.  “Bring snacks,” he whispered, before abruptly walking away.

Scully shook her head slowly, staring after Mulder and wondering what had just happened.

“UFO club?” her classmate asked, eyebrows raised.

Scully wondered how she could possibly begin to explain this while still retaining her dignity.  “I... lost a bet,” she said, and left it at that.

***

At 7:55, Scully set off for the parking lot.  It wasn’t too cold a night, but she had worn a couple of layers anyway, as she had no idea what would be going on.  It was already dark, but the parking lot was mostly vacated so it didn’t take her long to see Mulder.  She found him standing beside his car.  Even if he hadn’t been there, she would have picked this car out from a mile away – beaten up, mud on the wheels, a bumper sticker which matched the poster in his basement office.  She tried to conceal her grin as she entered his field of vision.  As soon as he saw her, he stood up straight and nodded in greeting.  She noticed he was wrapped in a warm coat himself, and no longer wearing the glasses he wore when they had met previously.

“Mulder, what are we doing out here?” she asked, coming to a halt beside him.

“Going for a drive.”

“Where?”

“It’s not far, don’t worry.  I’ll have you back before midnight.”

“Before mid – Mulder, I’m not sure about this.”  She folded her arms across her chest and stood her ground.  “I don’t want to get in a car this late with someone I barely know.”

“We can get to know each other on the way there,” Mulder insisted, putting his hand on her back and leading her towards the passenger door.  “Come on, Scully.  The whole point of joining clubs is to make new friends.”

“Then how come you’re the only one in your club?” she asked, an automatic response.  She was worried he would be offended, but instead, he grinned again, something she was beginning to find both infuriating and endearing.

“Nobody else can handle the truth,” he said.

Scully tried not to audibly sigh.  “What is this _truth_ you keep going on about?” she asked him.  “The truth about what?”

“Come with me and find out.”

Within two minutes, they were in the car and out of the parking lot, onto the road, on a journey to god knows where, as far as Scully was concerned.  The car stereo was playing some rock music she didn’t recognise, but Mulder turned it down to low as soon as they were on the road.

“Five facts about yourself,” he said, inviting her to speak.

Scully looked over at him.  “Really?” she asked.

“Come on, Scully, you said you wanted to get to know each other.”

They had barely left the parking lot and already Mulder was trying to do a high school icebreaker with her.  At least he was genuinely trying to get to know her – she supposed he must have taken her words to heart.  She reluctantly decided she would play along, but before she could come up with a fact, Mulder spoke again.

“Okay, I’ll go first,” he said, clearly sensing her lack of enthusiasm.  “My favourite food is sunflower seeds.”

“Sunflower seeds?”

He reached into his large jacket pocket and produced an open packet.  He waved it in her face as if trying to make a point, and then proceeded to pop one into his mouth before placing the packet in between them both.  “I said to bring snacks,” he said.  “Your turn.”

She opted for an obvious fact.  “I’m Catholic.”

“Really?” he asked, with raised eyebrows, seeming genuinely surprised.  “I wouldn’t have thought you’d be religious.”

She pulled on the chain around her neck, holding out the small golden crucifix towards him.  “Didn’t you notice?” she asked.

Mulder glanced over and shrugged.  “I just thought it was a punk thing.”

Scully smiled.  “Are you religious?” she asked.

“My mother’s Jewish.  I guess I sort of have some of that in me.  I don’t think there’s a God, though.”

“So, you believe in aliens, but you don’t believe in God?” Scully asked incredulously.

“You believe in God, but you don’t believe in aliens?” Mulder retorted.

Scully found that she had no response.  Instead, she said “your turn for a fact.”

“I want to work for the FBI when I’m older.”

It was Scully’s turn to raise her eyebrows.  “I thought you were all about bringing down the government,” she said.

“Best way to do it is from the inside, Scully,” Mulder nodded wisely.

Scully’s aspirations to become a doctor were far too obvious to be considered a fact when Mulder knew she was a medical student, so instead she said “my favourite book is Moby Dick.”

“Good choice,” Mulder nodded.  “My favourite film is Plan 9 From Outer Space.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Oh, Scully, I’ll have to show you it some time,” he said enthusiastically.  “It’s so mind-numbingly bad, you’ll love it.”

Scully looked down, trying to hide her grin at the fact that Mulder had proposed they get together in a non-UFO related capacity.  She really did not know this man at all, besides a few basic facts about his bizarre beliefs and questionable taste in snacks, but somehow she suspected that spending an evening watching terrible movies with him wouldn’t be half bad at all.

“Your go,” Mulder said, interrupting her train of thought.

She sat for a moment, wracking her brain for more mundane facts about herself.  “I have two brothers and a sister,” she said.  “Bill, Charlie and Melissa.”

“Big family,” Mulder said nonchalantly.

“Do you have any?”

Mulder was silent for an uncomfortable amount of time, and Scully was concerned she had said something she shouldn’t have.  Eventually, he said “I did,” in a flat tone.  “I had a sister.  Samantha.  She... she’s not around right now.  She’s coming back, one day.”

Scully definitely regretting asking.  She couldn’t begin to imagine what had happened with this Samantha to make Mulder lose all of his enthusiasm as soon as siblings were mentioned.  She looked down again to avoid his eyes, but he wasn’t looking at her anyway.  He was staring straight ahead, his grip on the steering wheel suddenly tighter.  They drove in this uncomfortable silence for a while, until Mulder finally spoke up.  “My turn,” he said quietly.

They went on like this until they arrived at their destination.  Scully lost count of how many facts they told, but it was definitely more than five.  She learned about his borderline obsessive fondness for Elvis (he promised to play her some of his favourite songs on the journey home), he learned about her desire to get a tattoo (she rejected his suggestion for them to get matching I Want to Believe tattoos in the name of UFO club spirit).  Thankfully, by the time he parked the car, Mulder had regained his excitable disposition.

“We’re here!” he announced, turning to look at her as if expecting her to be just as enthusiastic as he was.

Scully peered out of the car window, but there was very little to really see, aside from that they appeared to be parked in the centre of a very empty field.  “Mulder, I hate to tell you this,” she said, “but ‘here’ looks very much like the middle of nowhere.”

Mulder shook his head and tutted, unbuckling his seatbelt and reaching for the door handle.  “That’s where you’re wrong, Scully.  What may look like the middle of nowhere is actually a prime UFO hotspot.”

“Oh really?”

“Yes really.  And, luckily for you, today happens to be the one day a year that UFOs show themselves over this exact field.  Come on.”

He ran around to the trunk of the car and brought out a flashlight and a large picnic blanket.  As they made their way to a spot on the field, Mulder began detailing its history.  Something to do with cattle mutilations, abductions, and strange lights in the sky – Scully struggled to keep up, as Mulder was walking ahead of her and taking very long strides, so she missed out on the odd sentence here and there.  Once he had found a relatively flat area of the field, they set about laying the blanket down.  “We’ve got a while to wait, I made sure to get here early so we didn’t miss anything,” Mulder said, taking a seat and gesturing for her to do the same.

Once they were comfortable, he sat the flashlight between them and switched it on.  Scully felt like she should start singing campfire songs.  Instead, she listened to Mulder detail the finer points of the supernatural events which had occurred in this very spot where they were sitting.  This soon descended into other interesting stories from the area, and the promise that sometime next week, he would lend her some of his favourite local articles so she could get clued up.  “We don’t want you feeling like an outsider in the club, after all, Scully,” he had said.

It seemed like a century since Scully had eaten her tea, and seeing Mulder munching on sunflower seeds was making her hungry.  She produced her snack from her pocket and began eating them – as soon as Mulder saw, he wrinkled his nose.

“What are those?”

“Carrot sticks,” Scully stated, taking another bite.  She was well aware that she didn’t need to diet, but she was determined to avoid becoming the stereotypical college student who survived off alcohol and instant ramen noodles, so decided she would eat healthily from the off.

Mulder, meanwhile, reacted as if she had just said she was eating maggots.  “ _Carrot_ sticks?”

“You said to bring snacks.”

“Yeah, but... carrot?”

“Hey, you brought sunflower seeds,” she argued.

“Sunflower seeds are snacks,” he insisted.  “Carrots are a side to something tastier.  You can’t eat them on their own.  What, do you feel solidarity with them or something?”  He tugged gently on a loose strand of her red hair, as if to prove his point.

“No,” she insisted, moving her head away.  Then she grinned wickedly.  “They’re to help me see the UFOs in the dark.”

“Ha, ha,” Mulder responded, turning away and hugging his knees.  He looked back up at the sky and spoke in a far-away voice.  “Just you wait, Scully.  You won’t need anything to help you see.  They’re meant to make a light show in the sky, it’s going to be amazing.”

“They’re meant to?” Scully had asked.  Mulder had been talking the whole time as if he was an aficionado of the goings-on of this field.  “You’ve never seen them before?”

“No, I’ve just heard stories.”

“This field isn’t too far from campus, why haven’t you come out here before?”

Mulder shrugged.  “Out in a field in the middle of the night, alone?  Even I know that’d be stupid, Scully.”

“Oh,” she replied, realising that this was actually an example of Mulder being surprisingly sensible.  At least, until he continued.

“I mean, what if they’d abducted me?” he asked.  “And nobody else had been around to prove it?”

Scully almost gawked in disbelief.  Mulder’s priorities were certainly skewed.  She decided to go along with him, though, just for tonight.  “You think there’s a possibility of abduction and you bring me along without even warning me?” she asked.

“Don’t you worry, Scully,” he insisted.  “Keep eating those carrots, you’ll see the UFOs coming from a mile off.  Then you can save us both.”

Scully laughed, despite herself.  Mulder seemed proud that he had managed to amuse her.  He lay back on the blanket, hands tucked under his head, and continued to look up.

“I don’t think I’ll see much, if I’m being honest,” Scully said a while later, casting her eyes to the sky again.  “Didn’t you bother to check the weather forecast?  It’s pretty cloudy up there...”

“They’ll clear,” Mulder said.

Another hour passed them by: the skies had not cleared (possibly getting even cloudier, though Scully didn’t want to mention it and dull Mulder’s spirits) and there had been no sign of any light activity in the sky, UFO or otherwise.  As they waited, the two amused themselves with small talk.  Mulder said he would have named the constellations for her if they could actually see them clearly.  Scully already knew plenty of them, but would have listened to him anyway.  He had a manner of telling facts and information which intrigued her – it was almost like he was telling a story whenever he spoke.  Scully finished her carrots, and Mulder offered to refine her taste buds by sharing his sunflower seeds.  He insisted on teaching her how to eat them correctly, and soon they found their blanket littered with shells.

“You like?” Mulder asked after a while, popping the umpteenth seed into his mouth.

“I think I’ll stick to carrots,” Scully said.

Mulder shook his head.  “And they call me crazy,” he said.  After a moment, he spoke again, in a quieter and more serious tone.  “I, uh... I want to thank you for coming out here with me, Scully.  You know, even though you barely know me.”

“It’s fine,” Scully insisted.  “Besides, I learned a lot about you on the journey.”

“Not everything,” Mulder said quietly.

Scully looked at him, waiting for him to go on.  After a moment, he did.  “She was 8 years old, my sister.  When she went missing.  I was there – I didn’t remember it, they must have wiped my memory or something, but I knew something was up.  I kept having these weird thoughts, weird dreams.  I couldn’t get it out of my mind – the thought that I knew something, but I couldn’t quite work out what it was.  So I tried deep regression hypnosis.”

“Aliens,” Scully said.  The information had just dawned on her and it was as if the final piece of a puzzle had fallen into place.  Mulder’s obsession, his dedication, ‘I Want to Believe’, all of it.  “You think your sister was abducted by aliens.”

“I know it,” Mulder said.  “Through the hypnosis, I remembered it all, it became so clear.  My parents didn’t want to hear it, they said I was crazy.  And soon, everyone else did too.”

“I’m sorry,” Scully said, knowing it was a useless thing to say, but needing to say something anyway.  She wondered if she should do something more – rest her hand on his shoulder, touch his hand for a moment, anything to let him know that she was on his side.

Mulder shook his head.  “It’s alright.  I mean, I’m still gonna find her.  One day.  I bet the government have files on this sort of thing.  When I join the FBI, I’ll be able to be some use.  Until then, I guess I can just... keep searching the skies.”

Scully was about to respond, when there was a sudden violent flash of light, startling them both.  Mulder leapt to his feet at once, pointing to the sky.  “Did you see it?!” he shouted.

Scully followed suit and stood up too, but she couldn’t see what had caused the light, and no others had followed it up.  “I don’t see anything,” she said, her heart in her mouth as she looked around, hoping to find a simple explanation.

A sudden rumbling followed.  Mulder’s mouth dropped open in shock, and he stared at Scully with wide eyes.  “Something’s happening,” he said.  “Listen, can you hear that?”

Scully could hear it, and after her brief moment of panic after seeing the flash of light, she had now realised exactly what was going on.  “Mulder-” she began.

“They’re coming!” he shouted, gesturing wildly up at the sky, “they’re-”

“Mulder, it’s just-”

“Wait.”  Mulder had finally stopped shouting.  He had felt the first drops of rain and seemed to have come to his senses.  “It...”

“Thunder and lightning,” Scully said.  “It’s just thunder and lightning.”

Mulder turned and stared at her blankly, as if he believed in the possibility of a storm less than the possibility of aliens.  But it couldn’t be denied – the clouds had been gathering all night, and now they were finally putting themselves to work.  The rainfall steadily grew heavier, and Scully regretted not bringing a coat with a hood.  Mulder had, but he was not putting it to any use.  Instead, seemingly unbothered by the weather, he dropped dejectedly back onto the blanket, scattering sunflower seeds everywhere.  Scully found him slightly amusing, sitting there, like a kicked puppy.  After a moment, she joined him again – the blanket was damp, but it wasn’t like she would by any drier standing up.  She pulled her jacket tighter around herself and folded her arms, tucking her knees up to her chest.

“Are you okay?” she asked, nudging him with her shoulder.

He turned to face her, his face still one of disappointment.  “I really thought something was happening just now,” he said.  “I wanted to prove it to you.”

His voice was so sincere that Scully began to wonder how much of this trip was for Mulder, and how much of this trip was actually for her after all.  It seemed like he truly wanted for her to believe in him, and this had been his golden opportunity.

“Don’t worry,” Scully said, in the most reassuring tone she could muster.  “I’m sure you’ll find plenty of other chances to try and prove it to me.”

“I guess so.”

“And, hey.  At least neither of us got abducted.”  She smiled at him.  After a moment, he smiled back.  He seemed to regain some of his energy in that single exchange.  He staggered back up to his feet, holding his hand out to help her up, and together they picked up the blanket.  They shook the sunflower seeds off, but decided after several attempts that trying to drain it while the rain was still pouring down was a lost cause.

“You picked a bad day for a picnic, Mulder,” Scully commented idly, as they carried the sodden blanket between them back to the car.

“Sorry, dear,” Mulder replied, speaking as though talking to a frustrated wife.  “Next time, we can have it indoors.  And there’ll be no thunder and lightning.  And we’ll watch Plan 9 From Outer Space.”  He opened the trunk and they forced the blanket in.

“That sounds like fun,” Scully said.

“It will be,” Mulder said, shutting the trunk with a thud.  “Better than tonight.  I promise.”

“I don’t know,” Scully said, “I had fun tonight.”

Why they were having a conversation outside as the rain continued, when there was a perfectly good car right beside them, Scully did not know.  She felt soaked through, and under normal circumstances, she would be grouchy – instead, she wanted to laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation.  She was in the middle of a storm, in the middle of a field, in the middle of _nowhere_ , with the college’s resident UFO hunting weirdo.  This is not how she pictured her first term of studying medicine going down.

“Oh my God,” she said suddenly, as though realising something incredibly important.

“What?” Mulder asked, eyes widening as he checked behind him, as if expecting an alien life form to have appeared out of nowhere.

Scully shook her head.  “I haven’t done the reading for my morning lecture...”  She didn’t know if it was the expression on Mulder’s face, or the fact that she was remembering homework in this of all situations, but she did laugh now.  She didn’t know why it was funny, but she laughed – and she was pretty sure Mulder didn’t know why it was funny, but he laughed too.  The two of them somehow made their way to the car, still laughing at they knew not what, and it wasn’t until Mulder checked his watch to make sure the rain hadn’t killed it that the laughter stopped.

“Shit!” he exclaimed.  “It’s later than I thought.  I promised I’d have you back before midnight.”

Scully shook her head again, scattering rain drops.  “It’s alright,” she said.  “I promise I won’t be too angry.”  She tapped the car stereo with her finger.  “And if I am, you can distract me with your top 20 Elvis songs.”

“Try top 30, Scully,” Mulder replied, starting the ignition.

Sighing dramatically, Scully said “it’s gonna be a loooong ride home.”

***

At ten minutes past midnight, Dana Scully arrived back at her bedroom, utterly drenched and with a smile on her face that lasted until she fell asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is so long holy shit. Not sure when the next one will be up as I have an essay to work on, but knowing me, I'll probably end up focusing more on this instead.


	3. Plan 9

Weeks later, with finals fast approaching, Scully found herself spending most of her time in the college library surrounded by textbooks.  It was on one of these occasions when she found the peace of the library disturbed by the arrival of a certain Fox Mulder, who she was fairly sure wasn’t here to work.  This suspicion was confirmed as he spotted her from across the room, waved, and made his way over.  She wondered if he had developed some kind of Scully-radar: he seemed to find her everywhere.  As he approached her table, he called out “Hey, Scully!  Want to hang out tonight?”, earning glares from fellow students trying to study nearby.

She waited until he arrived before replying, in a quieter tone.  “I don’t know, Mulder, I’ve got an assignment,” she said, gesturing to the notes spread out on the table before her.

“So have I,” he said, manoeuvring himself to sit on the seat beside her, and she began to wonder if he had ever actually heard of personal space.  “Come on,” he continued, “you can’t spend your whole life studying.”

_And you can’t spend your whole life... doing whatever it is you do_ , she thought to herself.  “When you say hang out,” she began, “do you mean the watching movies kind, or the looking for aliens kind?”

Mulder put his hand on his heart and had the gall to look offended.  “I do other things besides those, you know.”

“Like what?” Scully quizzed.

“Ask me no questions, I tell you no lies,” he said.  “I’ll pick you up when it gets dark, alright?”

Scully was about to tell him that she hadn’t even said yes yet, when she sighed, looking down at her work.  She had been studying for hours; maybe it would be good to take a break.  She had noticed that as the term had gone on, she had been attending less and less events, and doing more and more work – and while spending the evening with Mulder wouldn’t necessarily be the social event of the season, it would make a change.  “Fine,” she said at last.

Mulder smiled triumphantly and stood from his seat.  “I’ll see you then,” he said, and as he walked away, Scully wondered to herself why she had ever told him where she lived.

***

Sitting at her desk in her room, Scully was startled by her roommate bursting in with full bags of shopping.  “Dana, there’s a guy outside waiting for you,” she announced.

“Oh, damn, I forgot,” Scully said, hurriedly standing from her desk.  As winter was approaching, the sun was setting earlier and earlier, and she had been so concentrated on her work that she hadn’t even noticed it was dark outside.

“Bit late to be meeting up with a guy, isn’t it?” her roommate asked teasingly as she sat on the edge of her bed.  “Is he your boyfriend?”

“What?” Scully asked, distractedly filing her notes away.  “No, he’s just my...”  She paused.  What exactly _was_ Mulder to her?  Were they friends, or just attendees of the same club?  They rarely interacted outside of it – sure, he _had_ asked her to hang out with him tonight, but was that because he genuinely liked being with her, or because he had nobody else to ask?  They had such vastly different mindsets that she struggled to work out exactly what the nature of their relationship was, other than against all odds, she actually enjoyed spending time with him.  Realising that this was probably a more detailed response than what her roommate was expecting, she finished her sentence with “Mulder.”  Pulling her leather jacket on, she asked “did you let him in?”

“No, I didn’t want to let someone in who I didn’t know, just in case.  Is he definitely yours?”

Scully walked across the room and glanced out of the bedroom window to check.  Sure enough, she could see Mulder standing by the front door on the ground below.  Well, she assumed it was Mulder, anyway: though she could barely see his face from her angle, she was sure nobody else would own a backpack that hideously vibrant.  And, as she looked closer, she noticed the sweater he was wearing – which she had at first assumed was spotted –actually seemed to be patterned with alien heads.  She didn’t quite know whether she was amused or repulsed by it, but she definitely wasn’t surprised.  “Yep,” she said.  “Definitely.”

She was downstairs in a matter of minutes, and Mulder looked up as the front door opened.  “Scully!” he said, as soon as she emerged.  “Hey.  Nice jacket.  Ready to go?”  He set off walking regardless, and she had to rush to catch up.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“Over to my place.”

“Mr Mulder,” she replied, arms folded and eyebrows raised, “I do hope you’re not propositioning me.”

“Hardly,” he chuckled, “unless bad Ed Wood films turn you on...”  He paused in his tracks and looked at her with an air of sudden eager curiosity.  “They don’t, do they?”

Scully couldn’t help but laugh.  “I don’t think so,” she said, shaking her head.  However, she had finally worked out the purpose of their evening.  “So, I’m finally being treated to Plan 9 From Outer Space?” she asked.  “This has been a few weeks coming.” 

Mulder shrugged nonchalantly.  “Yeah, well, I wasn’t sure how much you actually wanted to hang out with me, after the disaster of last time.  Less UFO light shows in the sky, more torrential rain.”

“It was fun, though, really,” she quickly insisted, remember how much he seemed to have wanted to impress her the last time.  “I like hanging out with you.”

“You do?” he asked, a little too quickly.

“Why does that surprise you?”

“I don’t know,” he said.  “I thought you were just putting up with me until you didn’t have to come to the club anymore.”

Scully abruptly stopped walking.  “What do you mean by that?” she asked.

Mulder stopped too, and turned to face her, sighing loudly as he did so.  “Come on, Scully, I _know_ you lost a bet,” he said.  “Everyone knows nobody would join Spooky Mulder’s UFO club unless they had to.  Plus, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but college sophomores are hardly the most subtle creatures.  But they wouldn’t make you do it all year, they wouldn’t go that far.  If I had to guess, I’d say the bet runs out... after Christmas break, am I right?  Then you’re free to go and never see me again.”

Scully wasn’t sure what was worse about this whole exchange – the fact that Mulder felt that she hadn’t really liked him this whole time, or the fact that even though he was wrong about that, he was right about the bet.  No matter what she said to reassure him, she was in no place to lie and try to convince him that she joined because she was genuinely interested in UFO activity.  At the end of the day, she was here because a group of people thought it was funny to humiliate someone just because of his slightly unusual beliefs.  The difference was, of course, that Scully was not one of these people.  “Mulder, the reason I joined the club doesn’t matter,” she said defiantly.  “If I really didn’t want to be there, I would have quit weeks ago.  I can make my own decisions for myself – contrary to what you may think, nobody is _making_ me do anything.  And believe it or not, I’m not just tagging along so I can laugh at you behind your back like all those idiots; I’m in this together with you.  And for that matter, if you’re so convinced I don’t like spending time with you, then why did you invite me over?”

She had felt her voice rising in frustration as she spoke: what had begun with wanting to reassure him had become anger at the idea that he would even think that of her.  In fairness to him, he was now staring slightly ashamedly at the ground, clearly trying to come up with a response to her question.  “Because...” he began slowly, avoiding her eyes and continuing to look down.  “...because I like spending time with you.”

“Well then,” she finally managed to say.  “Now we both know the feeling’s mutual.”

“I... I’m sorry, Scully,” he muttered, finally looking back up at her.  “I didn’t mean to start an argument.”

“No, it’s fine,” Scully said.  “Actually, I think it cleared the air a bit.  I just need you to trust me when I say that I really do like you.  Okay?”

“Okay,” he said, and offered a smile.  They picked up walking again, continuing for a while in silence, until he suddenly said “hey, Scully?  Are we – I mean, does this mean we’re friends?”

She smiled, half to herself.  “It’s funny,” she said, “I was wondering the same thing earlier.”

“And what did you decide?”

“Yes, Mulder.  I think we are.”

***

1 hour and 20 painfully drawn out minutes of film later, the credits rolled, and Scully found herself questioning her friendship choices.  At least, where taste in movies was concerned.  She didn’t quite see what possible enjoyment Mulder could get out of Plan 9 From Outer Space at all – she found more entertainment in watching him silently mouth along to every word, speaking his favourite lines aloud in a perfect imitation of the actors.  In fact, more often than not, she found herself watching Mulder rather than the screen.  He didn’t seem to mind.

“How many times have you seen this film, exactly?” she asked him, as he went across the room to eject the video.

He grinned.  “Including tonight... that rounds it up to 24.  Did you like it?”

“I think once was quite enough for me,” she concluded.

He tutted and shook his head.  “You just don’t appreciate the genius, Scully,” he said.

While he put the video away, she checked her watch and stood up.  It was getting late, and she didn’t want her roommate getting the wrong idea.  “I should probably get back,” she said as she shrugged on her jacket.  He looked slightly disappointed she was leaving so soon, so she said “thanks for a... cultured evening.”

“Hey, I’ll walk you home,” Mulder said.

“It’s not far-” she began to protest, but he was already walking across the room.

“Anything could happen between my place and your place,” he said insistently as he opened the door and ushered her out.

“Like alien abductions?” Scully asked, a smile playing at the corner of her lips.

“Not necessarily!” Mulder argued, now leading her down the corridor.  “Didn’t you read those files I gave you?  There’re all sorts of things that could be hidden on campus, just waiting to ambush innocent freshmen like you.  Mutants, ghosts, vampires, mothmen...”

“Mothmen?”

“Yeah, though that sort of thing seems to be confined to West Virginia...”

She let him ramble at her about supernatural creatures for most of the journey home, as it seemed to be what he was best at.  She honestly found it to be the most enjoyable part of the evening, and though she had protested at first, she was glad he had insisted on walking her home.  Once they reached her door, he stepped back.  “I won’t come in,” he said.  “I know your friend didn’t let me in earlier, in case I was some stranger.  That’s the right attitude: trust no one.  That’s the UFO club motto.”

“I thought the motto was I Want to Believe?”

Mulder shook his head.  “No, that’s just the slogan.  Or we have two mottos, whatever.  See you there on Thursday?”

“See you there,” Scully said.

“Oh, and next time we hang out, I promise you can pick the movie.”

Scully grinned as she shut the door and went upstairs to her room.  She didn’t think Mulder had quite bargained on her taste in movies.  She wondered if he liked The Exorcist.


	4. A Spaceman Came Travelling

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn’t quite know if I was going to get this chapter finished in time, but I was determined to write something seasonal, so apologies that it's very small and rushed and basically a bit rubbish. I’d like to thank everyone for the very lovely and very unexpected feedback this fic has been getting. Thanks for reading, and I hope you all have a very merry Christmas (or happy non denominational holiday).

Scully could hardly believe how soon Christmas break had come.  As she sat listening to Mulder ramble on about recent UFO sightings, in what was to be the final club meeting before Christmas, it occurred to her that this would be when the terms of the bet would end.  Technically, this was the last meeting she was obligated to attend.  She couldn’t believe how quickly time had seemed to pass – it hadn’t seemed that long ago that she was standing in this room for the first time, listening to some stranger going on about conspiracies as though he was trying to ward her off.  And now here they were again, in much the same situation, only this time he was clearly trying to take her along for the ride.  And she was letting him.

He finished a long winded speech on the significance of recent UFO sightings in Geneva, and then checked his watch.  “8:00,” he said.  “I guess I’ll see you after Christmas break, Scully.”

She nodded, standing from her chair.  She wondered if they should give each other proper goodbyes.  “Do you have any plans?” she asked.

Mulder shrugged.  “I don’t really celebrate Christmas,” he said.  Scully remembered how he had mentioned his mother was Jewish, and was about to apologise for being presumptive when he continued, almost as if having read her mind.  “I mean, we did celebrate it when I was a kid.  As a secular thing, since it’s not really about religion any more – no offense.  But after Samantha was taken, we just sort of... stopped.”

“I’m sorry,” Scully said.  She always felt helpless whenever he mentioned his sister, and almost guilty for having more than enough siblings of her own to spend Christmas with.

“No, really, it’s fine,” Mulder insisted.  “It’s actually a good thing, means I don’t have to spend the whole day in the same room as both my parents.”

“Don’t you get on?”  Scully had never paused to wonder what Mulder’s parents would be like.  She couldn’t imagine grown adults being anything like him, and that left her with very little to go on.

“They’re about five seconds away from divorce at this point,” Mulder explained.  “And me being around only gets in the way of their constant arguing.  Not that it really stops them.”

“You can spend Christmas with us if you’d like.”  The offer came out before Scully could stop herself.

Mulder looked up at her in surprise, and then chuckled and shook his head.  “Thanks, Scully, but I wouldn’t want to get in your way.”

“You wouldn’t be in our way.”  Now she had started, she couldn’t seem to stop.  She felt awful at the idea of him spending Christmas the way he had described, and having him over for Christmas dinner was now her new objective.  “I’ll have to ask my parents, but I’m sure they won’t mind,” she went on.  “Bill had his girlfriend round last Christmas – not that you’re my boyfriend, or anything, just that they won’t mind if someone outside the family comes over, that’s all I mean.”

She left him with the insistence that she would email him with a time and address if her parents said it was okay.  Persuading them was easy enough (amid teasing from Melissa that she was having her boyfriend over) but she received no response from Mulder once she contacted him.  She spent the entirety of Christmas morning wondering if he was going to turn up.  Maybe she had been too forward in inviting him: Christmas was a big holiday, after all, not usually something you invited friends over to celebrate with your family.  Maybe he was doing something with his family this year, despite what he had said.  Or maybe they weren’t allowing him to come – that was the worst option.  She couldn’t stop wondering what his parents might actually be like.  She could easily be blowing things out of proportion: and yet, at the same time, the idea of Mulder having unpleasant parents made an awful lot of sense when it came to his character.

Given her worries, Scully was almost surprised to hear a knock at the door as she was laying the table for dinner.  She rushed to the front door, and sure enough, there was Mulder.

“Hey, Scully,” he said.  “Merry Christmas.”

***

Scully stood and waited for him as he hung up his coat.  She ushered him in just as the food was put out, and introduced him to her family, reminding them that he preferred to known by his surname.  Her mother seemed delighted that she had brought a “young man” to dinner.  Her father looked upon him with more of an eye of suspicion, though Scully had expected nothing less.  Charlie and Melissa, meanwhile, seemed more focused on the alien sweater which Scully was appalled to see Mulder had chosen to wear for the event.  It was different to the one he had worn before – this one featured a large alien head in a santa hat.  Scully wondered how many alien based outfits Mulder actually owned.  She was suddenly glad that Bill was spending this Christmas at Tara’s after she had spent last year at theirs – she could only imagine what her older brother would have to say about Mulder, and none of it was very flattering.

“So, you’re in Dana’s classes?” her father asked, interrupting her train of thought.

Mulder shifted in his seat.  “Er, no, sir.  I’m a psychology major.”  He paused.  “And a sophomore.”

“So how do you know each other?”

Scully had managed, up until this point, to avoid explaining the origins of her friendship with Mulder to her parents.  Melissa knew, of course, and she was fairly certain Charlie would have been informed by this point, but her parents were still blissfully unaware of the existence of any UFO club, and Scully had planned to keep it that way.  She glanced over at Melissa, who had suddenly become very interested in her dinner.  “We’re in the same club,” Scully finally managed.  “It’s sort of a science... umm...”

“We investigate the paranormal,” Mulder cut in.

“I see.”  Scully’s father glanced down at Mulder’s sweater, and then across to Scully, who had decided to follow Melissa’s lead and was now looking down at her own food, as if this would alleviate the awkwardness of the situation.  While her father wouldn’t be as strict as to directly interfere with her personal choices, Scully was fairly certain that investigating the paranormal wasn’t quite what he had had in mind when he sent her off to college to earn a medical degree.  She was hoping to change the subject, but Mulder had other ideas.

“Scul-Dana doesn’t really believe it,” he was now saying.  “She’s always trying to give me scientific explanations.  I wanted to convince her by the end of the year, but it might take some work.”  He stopped for a moment, and then smiled.  “Anyway, I still like having her there.  It’s nice to have someone listen to me.”

He had turned to look at Scully as he spoke, and she didn’t know whether to be flattered or embarrassed at him complimenting her at the dinner table in front of her family.  She could feel everybody’s eyes on her, and decided that embarrassment was definitely the chief emotion.  In the silence that followed, Mulder clearly began to feel the same way.  He turned back to his food, motioned to the plate with his fork, and loudly announced “this is really good”.

Mercifully, this changed the topic of conversation away from the UFO club and to Christmas dinner, which soon deviated into various different subjects.  While the conversation was dominated by her family, Mulder joined in from time to time, and Scully was glad to see him with a smile on his face.  She wondered what he would be doing right now if she hadn’t invited him over – she imagined him sitting alone in his room, listening to his parents fight below, and decided that no matter how awkward some of this meal had been, it was certainly better than the alternative.

After dinner, they moved into the lounge.  While everyone else sat down in front of the TV, Mulder took it upon himself to go over to the mantelpiece and quietly examine the cards addressed to Scully.  She went to stand behind him as he read them one by one.  “I forgot to get you a card,” he said.

“That’s alright, I didn’t get you one either,” she said.  She had got him one – it was sitting upstairs in her room – but she didn’t want to make him feel guilty for not getting her one.  She decided to leave it for next year.

“Starbuck?”  Mulder had reached the card from her father, and was reading it confusedly.

“It’s from Moby Dick,” Scully explained.  “Dad calls me Starbuck, I call him Ahab.”

Mulder seemed amused by this.  “You really _do_ love Moby Dick,” he commented.  He traced the word Starbuck with his finger, a small smile on his face, and then cast his eyes over to Scully’s family.  They had found a Christmas movie on TV and had settled down to watch it.  Mulder turned back to Scully.  “I should go,” he said.

“You don’t have to,” she said.

He shook his head.  “I don’t want to intrude.  You should really be with your family.  Thanks for having me over, though.”

“You’re welcome, Mulder,” Scully smiled, knowing it would be no use trying to persuade him to stay any longer.  He was far too stubborn for that.  “I’ll come and say goodbye.”  She called over to her family “I’m just going to walk Mulder to the door!”

“Are you leaving already, Fox?” her mother asked.

“Mulder,” Scully corrected.

“I really should be going,” Mulder said insistently.  “Thanks for the dinner, Mrs Scully.”

After they had all exchanged Merry Christmases, Scully led him out of the lounge and towards the front door.  “Sorry mom keeps calling you Fox,” she said.  “I have tried to tell her.”

“It’s alright, she means well,” Mulder replied.  “Better than Spooky.  Well, not much better...”  He paused as she opened the front door, and then stood still in the doorway for a moment, turning back to face her.  “Before I go,” he said, “I got you something.”  He paused to root through his jacket pocket, and pulled out a small wrapped gift.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Scully said – now _she_ felt guilty for not getting _him_ anything.

“Of course I did.  You invited me to dinner, I wanted to repay you.  It’s just a little thing...”  He handed it over.  “There you go.  From Spooky to Starbuck.”  He grinned to himself.  “We sound like a duo in a weird children’s show.”  He stood before her and waited as she unwrapped her gift.  She tore the paper away and soon held in her hand a small green pin shaped like an alien head.  Scully almost laughed – she couldn’t have thought of a more Mulder-ish gift if she tried.

“It’s the wrong colour, they didn’t have any grays,” Mulder said, almost apologetically.  “I thought it could go on your jacket. I know it’s not very punk rock, you don’t have to wear it, I just-”

“Of course I’ll wear it,” Scully insisted.  “In UFO club spirit.”

“Does this mean you’re staying on?  After Christmas?”  He was looking at her hopefully.

She smiled.  “Of course I-” she began, but was interrupted by Melissa suddenly breezing past on her way to the bathroom, calling “what’s taking so long, have you guys found the mistletoe?”

Both Mulder and Scully’s heads shot up at once to look above them, but there was no mistletoe to be seen.  As she heard Melissa laughing in the distance, Scully wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or disappointed.  “She’s just joking,” she said feebly.

“Don’t let the lack of mistletoe stop you, Scully,” Mulder teased, stepping back out of the door away from her as if to show he was only joking too.

“I couldn’t kiss you even if I wanted to, Mulder,” Scully said, motioning to the height difference between them.  “You’re way too high up, up there.”

As if to prove a point, Mulder grinned, ducked down exaggeratedly, and gently kissed her on the cheek.  “Merry Christmas, Scully,” he whispered.

She was sure she blushed bright scarlet, but she was smiling anyway.  “Merry Christmas, Mulder.”


	5. Platonic Activity

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stole this chapter title from the tremendous vine account The X-Files Abridged. Mulder and Scully are really bad at being platonic best buds no matter what universe they’re in.  
> Happy Valentines Day, folks. Hope you all got to hold the face of your constant/touchstone while crying today.

Not for the first time since starting college, Scully wondered how on earth she had ended up here on a Thursday evening.  This time, however, “here” was not in a basement room joining a UFO club, or in a rainy field in the middle of nowhere.  This time, “here” was on a date.  And somehow, this was even more unusual.

For a start, she was surprised that somebody would actually ask her on a date, given the reputation she was beginning to gather for herself.  Since deciding to continue attending Mulder’s club after Christmas, she was now officially “in”, with no obligations of a bet keeping her there.  Whether this made her just as bad as Mulder in everybody’s eyes, she wasn’t sure.  She had heard the name Mrs Spooky being thrown around a few times since returning after winter break, but this was probably less to do with people assuming that she was just as invested in the paranormal as Mulder, and more to do with the even more popular rumours that they were dating.

She wondered if Mulder had heard the rumours.  She didn’t see how he could have missed them.  Still, he never mentioned them, and neither did she, and they continued on as normal.  Scully didn’t actually mind the rumours as much as she thought she would – after all, there were worse people she could be “dating”.  She didn’t seem to like them quite as much as Melissa, though, who seemed endlessly amused by the idea of them being true, mostly because that would mean that she would get to watch her sister inform their father that the conspiracy theorist who came to Christmas dinner in an alien sweater was now dating his youngest daughter.

Tonight, however, Scully’s date was not with Mulder, but with Ethan, a fellow student she was not close to, but friendly with.  He seemed nice enough – and, to her knowledge, hadn’t called her Mrs Spooky at any point –so she was perfectly happy to spend an evening with him.  They met up at a restaurant and bar on campus.  He was already there when she arrived, and stood from his seat to greet her and kiss her cheek.  She found herself blushing as she took her seat, and quickly realised that this was not because of Ethan, but because the kiss had reminded her of Mulder performing much the same action on Christmas day.

She found herself thinking of that moment more than what was entirely necessary.  It wasn’t something they’d ever discussed afterwards, and so of course she’d assumed that it hadn’t meant anything.  After all, kissing on cheeks was a perfectly acceptable platonic gesture.  Her mother kissed her on the cheek sometimes, for example.  But, apparently, so did her date.  She shook her head and tried to clear her mind, and think of anything other than Fox Mulder.  She noticed that Ethan was looking through the menu, and took it upon herself to do the same.  Once they had decided on food and drinks, Ethan went up to the bar to order for them both.

It was only when she was left alone at the table, looking around at the rest of the room, that Scully noticed Mulder.  There he was, sitting in a booth the corner of the room as if he belonged there, sipping at a coke and looking over at the bar.  She felt almost angry – why did he have to be in the same place as her on the same night, when she was trying her hardest to think of something _other_ than him?  She wondered what he was doing here.  Surely he didn’t have a date as well?  She dismissed that notion straight away: she was fairly certain that the only woman she had ever seen him interact with was herself (in fact, she had barely seen him interact positively with anybody of ANY gender) so a date was out of the question.  Not that it would be any of her business if he was on a date, she reminded herself.  After all, she hadn’t told him about Ethan.

Ethan, the person who she was probably supposed to be thinking about.  Ethan, who was now returning to the table, drinks in hand.  “What are you staring at?” he asked, setting the drinks down on their table.

“What?” Scully asked, turning to look at him.  Had she been staring?  “Oh, nothing.”  She took a quick sip of her drink.  “I just noticed a friend, that’s all.”

Sitting down, Ethan glanced over his shoulder in the direction Scully had been looking.  “Who, the guy in the corner?”

Scully nodded, hoping the conversation would soon move on.  Ethan, however, had other ideas.  “Isn’t that that... ‘Spooky’ guy?”

“He doesn’t like to be called that,” Scully responded curtly.  She took another sip of her drink, now wishing she had asked for something a bit stronger if she was going to have to go through this discussion.

To his credit, Ethan must have noticed that Scully did not want to talk about this, and he moved the conversation quickly along.  Scully had been right about him.  He was, seemingly, a nice young man.  She didn’t feel any immediate connection with him, but he was perfectly nice.  Every so often, he would glance down at his food, and Scully would take the opportunity to look over at Mulder’s table.  Just to check up on him.  Through the course of the evening, he had been joined by three other men, and they all appeared to be having an intense discussion about something.  At one point, Ethan left to go to the bathroom, giving Scully a good few minutes to watch Mulder from afar.  He still hadn’t glanced in her direction.  She wondered if he had noticed her.

***

Mulder had noticed her.  In fact, he had noticed her the moment she came in.  She had told him she wasn’t able to attend the club meeting tonight, and now he knew why.  He watched curiously from a distance as she walked over to the table and was greeted by a guy Mulder didn’t recognise.  He even kissed her on the cheek.  _Bit forward_ , Mulder thought, raising his eyebrows.  Not that this was a problem.  Scully was perfectly within her rights to go on dates and have her cheek kissed by whomsoever she chose.

On watching this event take place, however, Mulder couldn’t help but wonder what would happen with them if Scully got an actual boyfriend.  At least the dating rumours would fall flat.  He and Scully had been conveniently ignoring them, but he knew they were both well aware of what people were saying.  He felt somewhat guilty that people were even calling her Mrs Spooky now, particularly when she didn’t even believe in all that stuff.  He considered making jokes about it to her to lighten the awkwardness, but he knew it probably annoyed her that she was being reduced to nothing more than Spooky Mulder’s girlfriend, and so he kept quiet.  Clearly it wasn’t tarnishing her reputation too much, though, if she was here on a date tonight.  Which brought Mulder back to the issue at hand: if Scully got a boyfriend, would she still want to spend time with him?  Significant others take up rather a lot of your time – at least, so Mulder had been told.  He was rather out of practice when it came to that area.  Maybe he should get a girlfriend.  He laughed to himself at the ridiculousness of the idea (for a start, he’d have to find someone who would actually want to date him) but continued to construct this fantasy in his mind.  Perhaps he and his hypothetical girlfriend could go on double dates with Scully and her boyfriend.  At least that way, he’d still get to see her.

Movement from Scully’s table interrupted his train of thought.  He saw her date standing up from the table to go over to the bar, and quickly looked away, in case either of them caught him staring.  He tried to act as casually as possible, sipping at his drink and pointedly looking in any direction except Scully’s.  He cast his eyes to the bar, trying to get a proper look at her date.  He wasn’t that good looking.  Scully could definitely do better.

Not that he was jealous.  Not at all.  He was just trying to look out for her, like friends do.  Trying to ensure that her potential boyfriend was good enough for her.  From his quick observation, he was thinking no, but that was probably because he had a hard time thinking of anybody who would be good enough for Scully.  He was still having difficulty believing that she stuck around him after Christmas.  Or that she actually wore the alien pin he gave her.  Or that she actually liked him.  _No wonder people think we’re dating_ , he thought to himself with a sigh.  _If I didn’t know better, I’d think we were dating._

By the time Scully’s date had returned to her table with their drinks, Mulder had noticed the arrival of his friends, entering the bar in the midst of an animated discussion.  _Finally, a distraction_ , he thought, waving them over.  He would be prevented watching the progress of Scully’s date now that they were here – mostly because if Frohike caught him looking, he would demand to be introduced to her, and the last thing Mulder wanted to do was to introduce Melvin Frohike to Dana Scully.

***

“Dana?”

Scully looked back towards Ethan, who was looking at her with a slightly concerned expression. 

“Yes?” she asked.

“Uh... do you have something on your mind?” Ethan asked carefully, setting his knife and fork down.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s just that you haven’t been talking much,” Ethan explained.  “And you keep looking past me.  Over there.”  Without turning around, he gestured vaguely behind his shoulder.  Scully looked down in embarrassment, wondering just how much he had noticed her looking in that direction, when she thought she had been fairly discreet.  “And I just had to say your name three times to get your attention,” he added.

“Sorry,” Scully said.  She wondered if that last point had anything to do with the fact that she was beginning to get more used to being called by her surname than anything else.  Mulder practically refused to use her first name – why anyone would think they were dating when they referred to each other more like business partners than romantic partners, she did not know – and he used her name a lot when addressing her, even when she was the only one in the room and he couldn’t possibly be talking to anybody else.  She found that she liked that.  She also found that she still hadn’t properly replied to Ethan.  “I guess I’m just a little distracted,” she finally managed to say.

“Yeah,” Ethan muttered, picking up another forkful of food.  “I’ll say you are.”

***

“So...   What were you up to last night, Scully?” Mulder asked casually.  “So that you couldn’t come to the club.”

It was the next day, and the two were walking to the library together.  Scully was wondering how exactly to tell him that she spent the evening on an failed date which ended in an uncomfortable “I guess I’ll see you around” after she had spent the majority of it looking more at the booth in the corner than at her actual date.  However, it seemed clear that Mulder hadn’t noticed her there, leaving her free to make up an excuse.  “Oh, I was just, you know, working,” she said breezily.  “I had a big assignment, I needed to get it finished.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.  And what about you...”

Mulder couldn’t admit to where he’d been, now.  If she hadn’t seen him there, as soon as he mentioned the place she would put two and two together and realise that even if she didn’t see him, he probably saw her, and that he knew she was lying.  Why _was_ she lying?  He concluded that the date must have gone badly.  This made him feel oddly pleased, though he wasn’t quite sure why.  Clearly his judgement was correct: he knew that guy hadn’t been good enough for her.  He decided to save her the embarrassment and make up a lie of his own.  “I was just down in the basement,” he said, with a dismissive wave of his hand.  “Sorting out files, you know.  Photographs and newspaper clippings, and... you know...”

“Yeah.”

**_Liar._ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter was such a long time coming! I've found myself either uninspired or busy with uni work. Thanks for sticking with me, and thanks for the lovely feedback as always :)


	6. A Nice Trip to the Forest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my God. So it may have been, you know, several months since I updated this fic... I was having a bit of a dry run on inspiration. But somehow people kept discovering it and leaving lovely comments which really got me wanting to write more so HERE I AM WITH ANOTHER (albeit rather short) CHAPTER. Thanks for sticking with me in this extremely long accidental hiatus.

“Bigfoot, Mulder?”

“Or a bigfoot-like creature,” Mulder said, nodding wisely.

Scully couldn’t believe this was how she was spending her Saturday.  When Mulder had called her for an “emergency UFO club meeting” she hadn’t been sure what to expect, but this was a new one.  She peered again at the photograph Mulder had handed her.  It had been taken a week ago, he had said, by a group camping out in the forest – it was later posted on an online forum (Cryptids United, he said it was called, which she found mildly embarrassing at best) which was how he had come across it earlier this morning.  The focus of the image was a group of friends posing in front of a campfire, in a clearing in a forest.  But somewhere in the background, between trees, was...

“...a large, bipedal, hairy, humanoid being,” Mulder reeled off.

Scully placed the photo back down on the desk between them.  “Mulder, that image is low quality and the figure in the background is blurry, and you expect me to believe that this is bona fide evidence of the existence of Bigfoot?”

“Well, of course not, we’ll have to look further into it.”

“And you want us to do what, exactly?” Scully asked.

“Go into the forest, Scully!  Investigate!”  At the raise of Scully’s eyebrow, Mulder sighed.  “Look, I know our last UFO Club field trip didn’t actually result in, well, UFOs.  But this forest is local, and I’ve heard numerous reports of suspicious activity occurring there.  It’s worth a shot.”

“Why do you always want to take me to places where you know suspicious activity has occurred?” Scully asked.

“Don’t worry, I’m sure you can protect me,” Mulder insisted.  “So, will you come?”

Scully smiled despite herself, finally relenting.  “I’ll come,” she said, “on two conditions.  We leave there before it gets dark, and at no point do we get separated.  I’m not spending my Saturday lost and alone in the middle of the forest.”

Mulder grinned.  “Have no fear, Scully” he said confidently.  “I’ve got walkie-talkies.”

***

“Spooky to Starbuck,” Mulder spoke into his walkie-talkie, “do you copy?”

“I’m standing right next to you.”

“ _Do you copy?_ ”

Scully rolled her eyes and lifted her own walkie-talkie to her mouth.  “I copy.”

They had been trudging through the woods for a good twenty minutes now.  Mulder had his walkie-talkie in one hand and camera in the other – “ _for evidence, Scully_ ,” he had insisted, although so far, all he had been taking photos of was her (admittedly, rather vibrant) rain coat, which he seemed endlessly entertained by.  So far, no Bigfoot.

“We’re another ten minutes from the clearing in the photo,” Mulder said.  “There’s probably more evidence there.”

Scully didn’t bother informing him that for there to be _more_ evidence, there first had to be _some_ evidence, and if there was any, she hadn’t seen it.

They walked the next ten minutes with Mulder attempting to make small talk using the walkie-talkies, insisting that if she refused to split up with him to cover more ground, he had to get _some_ use out of them.  This soon dissolved into a game or This or That? with Mulder asking the questions and Scully reluctantly using her walkie-talkie to answer them.

“Dogs or cats?  Over.”

“Dogs.  Over.”

“Ice cream or frozen yoghurt?  Over.”

“Frozen yoghurt.  Over.”

“Gross.  Bath or shower?  Over.”

“Bath.  Mulder, do we have to say 'over' every single time?  Over.”

“Yes.  Iced coffee or iced tea?  Over.”

“Iced tea.  Over.”

“Good choice.  Bigfoot or mothman?  Over.”

“Mulder...”

The game came to a close as they had arrived at the clearing.  Mulder launched into full investigative mode, pinning his walkie-talkie to his belt and pulling out his camera.  “Let’s spread out,” he said, directing her to the other end of the clearing.

“What exactly are we looking for, Mulder?” Scully asked, following his direction.

“Anything,” Mulder said.  “Footprints, maybe some fur caught on a branch...”

“And that couldn’t be caused by any other animal?” Scully asked.

“Well, of course, we’d have to have it tested,” Mulder said.

“Of course, the famous Bigfoot identification test,” Scully said under her breath.  She found herself looking for evidence all the same, but it was cold, and the ground was too hard for footprints to have been made.  There was no visible fur anywhere either, and short of seeing literal Bigfoot running by, Scully was unsure what else there possibly was to find.

“Scully!  Get over here!” Mulder suddenly said in a hushed shout into the walkie-talkie.

The sound startled Scully and she turned immediately.  At first, she didn’t see him, and was worried something had happened – after a few seconds of fevered glancing around, she saw him on the very edge of the clearing, by a collection of bushes, which he was looking down towards.  He seemed frozen on the spot.

“What is it?” Scully asked, walking over.  Mulder shook his head and put a finger over his lips to indicate she needed to be quiet.  Once she was close enough, he took her by the arm and pulled her closer to stand right where he had been standing.  “Look,” he said quietly, pointing into the bushes.  Scully’s eyes followed the direction he was pointing, and as soon as she saw it, she gasped.  There was a large, bipedal, hairy, humanoid being, lying in the bushes.

“Mulder...” Scully finally managed in a low voice.

Mulder was grinning ear to ear.  “Scully,” he replied.

“I – are you sure?” she asked.  The creature certainly looked a lot like Bigfoot.  Its body was not that of any recognisable animal, especially not one that would be native to this forest.  However, it was also turned away, and partially obscured by the bushes surrounding it.

“No, I’m not sure,” Mulder said.  He lifted his camera anyway and took a photograph of the creature from where he was standing.  “Let’s go check it out,” he said.

“Mulder, it’s asleep.”

“So?”

“So, what if you wake it up?  It could be dangerous.”

“Okay, so when it mauls me, you run and get help,” Mulder replied.  After a moment, he handed her his camera.  “And try and get photos.”

“While it’s mauling you?” Scully asked.

“If I’m going to get attacked by Bigfoot, I want proof,” Mulder said, as if this was obvious.  Scully stared at him, dumbfounded, as he took a wary step forward.  When nothing happened, he took another step, and another, until he was toe-to-toe with the closest bush.

“Get the camera ready,” he said, and Scully lifted it.  Mulder nodded, and slowly reached down towards the bush.

“Mulder, be careful,” Scully said in a hushed whisper.

Mulder reached further downwards, further, further, until finally, he made contact.

He flinched.

Nothing happened.

He prodded it again.  Still nothing.

Scully walked up to stand beside him.  “Is it dead?” she asked.

Mulder reached down and pressed his full palm against the back of the creature, and shook it gently.  It moved a little too easily.  Immediately, both Mulder and Scully knew exactly what was going on.

***

Mulder didn’t talk for much of the drive back from the forest.  They had established that it was a costume discarded in the bushes.  That the photograph was a fraud: one of the friends out camping in the woods had probably dressed up for the photo, and then they had thrown the costume in the bushes afterwards rather than take it home with them.  Mulder was clearly embarrassed and disappointed, and Scully felt a little the same.  It was like an anticlimactic ending to an episode of Scooby Doo, where the vampire or werewolf was just an insignificant character from earlier on.

“Anybody could have thought what you thought,” Scully said eventually, trying to break the silence.

Mulder didn’t reply for a moment, and when he did he said “sorry for dragging you out on another pointless investigation.”

“It wasn’t pointless,” Scully insisted.  “We both got a bit of exercise.  You learned I like dogs and iced tea.  I learned you really like walkie-talkies.”

Mulder finally grinned.  “I suppose...  One good thing did come out of today.”

“What’s that?” Scully asked.

“You believed.”

“Excuse me?”

“Come on,” Mulder said, “you thought that it might have been Bigfoot too.  Just for a second.”

“No I didn’t.”

“Yes you did.  You thought it was asleep, you told me to be careful around it.  _You believed_ ,” he repeated in a sing song voice.

“It – it could have been anything, Mulder,” Scully said.  “Any animal could have been asleep, and any animal could have attacked you if you provoked it.”

“So what did you think it was?” Mulder asked.  “A gorilla escaped from the zoo?  A really big hairy guy?”

“I didn’t think it was Bigfoot, Mulder,” Scully insisted in a serious tone, staring him down until he eventually relented, eyes back on the road.  Content, she nodded and sat up straight, facing ahead again.

And then, she heard him say “yeah, yeah,” and knew it was going to be a long drive back home.

**Author's Note:**

> Is this fic going anywhere? Who knows! I left it open ended and we'll see where it goes...


End file.
